Vernon Loeb To Join The Atlantic as Politics Editor

Loeb will oversee expanded coverage of Washington and doubling of The Atlantic’s politics team in 2018.

Jun 14, 2018

Washington, D.C. (June 14, 2018)—The Atlantic has hired top newsroom editor Vernon Loeb to be its Politics Editor, editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg and TheAtlantic.com editor Adrienne LaFrance announced today. Loeb will join The Atlantic in early July, at a time when it will continue to expand its coverage of Washington and double the size of its political reporting team. Loeb has spent his career as a reporter and editor at many of the country’s top newspapers. He is currently the managing editor of the Houston Chronicle.

“We have ambitious goals for our politics and national security coverage leading up to 2020,” said Goldberg. “An editor of Vernon’s skill, experience and proven leadership abilities will help us achieve our goals.”

Under the leadership of Goldberg, LaFrance, and Loeb, The Atlantic will continue to expand its distinctive and highly-sought-after reporting on the White House, federal agencies, national security, Congress, and the culture of the capital. Loeb’s first priorities will be to build up reporting teams covering Congress and the midterm elections, and reporters covering the White House and national security.

Loeb has spent his career as a reporter and editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Houston Chronicle. As a foreign correspondent at The Inquirer, he covered Tiananmen Square, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, and the first Gulf War. He covered the CIA and the Pentagon for The Post, and in 2004 went west to run an investigative team at the Los Angeles Times. He returned to The Post in 2011 as Metro Editor, and then in 2014 became managing editor of the Houston Chronicle, which has been a Pulitzer finalist in each of the past two years.

Loeb succeeds Yoni Appelbaum, who has been tapped to oversee The Atlantic’s forthcoming Ideas section. Appelbaum guided The Atlantic’s urgent and sophisticated coverage of the 2016 election and the first year of the Trump presidency.

Politics is a key focus in The Atlantic’s expansion this year—which, already underway, will see the company add 100 new staff and investments across its divisions and platforms. In the newsroom, The Atlantic also recently announced the opening of a San Francisco bureau and in March debuted a new Family section. Recent editorial hires include Ellen Cushing to lead tech coverage in San Francisco; Taylor Lorenz as a tech staff writer; Lauren N. Williams as a senior editor and Hannah Giorgis as a staff writer on the Culture team; and Adam Harris as a staff writer covering education.

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